Theater review

Placebo

A placebo is medical-speak for a harmless substance that has no real curative effects whatsoever. The same could be said of Obie winner Melissa James Gibson’s new drama: “Placebo” which looks and feels like a play but lacks any real impact.

Carrie Coon — who garnered raves on Broadway in the revived “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and on-screen in “Gone Girl” — plays Louise, a medical researcher worker testing an experimental drug designed to increase women’s sexual arousal. One of her subjects is Mary (Florencia Lozano), who’s desperate to reignite her sexual desire for her husband.

“I used to be someone who wanted to do it all the time. I mean all the time!” Mary laments. But while the initial results seem promising, Mary’s afraid it won’t last — and that what she’s really getting is a placebo, not the real thing.

Louise has problems of her own. Her mother’s dying, and she’s stuck in a stale relationship with live-in boyfriend Jonathan (William Jackson Harper), who’s having trouble quitting smoking and finishing his dissertation on Pliny the Elder. Louise finds herself drawn to her slacker colleague (Alex Hurt), with whom she bonds over the office’s balky vending machine. Their effort at getting it to spit out candy is one of the liveliest scenes in the play.

The connection between Louise’s work and her unsatisfying personal life seems tenuous at best, and some plot turns — including a “breather” the couple takes, during which time they both stray — aren’t really developed. That wouldn’t matter if the characters or dialogue were more compelling, but the whole thing feels so sketchily developed that it’s impossible to care.

The performances are equally lackluster, with Coon surprisingly listless and her male co-stars failing to make much of an impression. Only Lozano shines in her too-brief role as the sexually frustrated test subject.

Daniel Aukin’s staging fails to bring much coherence to the proceedings, and David Zinn’s set design — simultaneously depicting Louise’s office, her apartment and a hospital lounge — accentuates the play’s thematic links at the cost of looking like a confusing jumble.

All told, “Placebo” could well have benefited from a dose of theatrical Viagra.